Thursday, September 27, 2007

IGNTP John: The Majuscules

Yesterday I saw a copy of: The New Testament in Greek IV. The Gospel According to St. John. Edited by the American and British Committees of the International Greek New Testament Project. Volume Two The Majuscules (edited by U.B. Schmid, with W.J. Elliott and D.C. Parker; NTTSD 37; Leiden: Brill, 2007) brill

I only saw it briefly (I'm wondering whether contributors get a discounted copy - Hint to Ulrich?), so only have a few quick thoughts: Much like the Papyri volume it looks pretty good stuff (preliminary congratulations all round). Each small manuscript gets an individual transcription and (I haven't checked for completeness) a reasonably clear photo (proper plates in the back). Probably the title is a bit more convoluted than it needs to be. There is a rather nice footnote suggesting that some of the editors would have prefered The Uncials. I look forward to seeing whether I can get a copy cheaper than Euro 169 (Hint 2). Hopefully we might have some fuller comments later (or a review if I can scrounge a copy - Hint 3!)

I took a look at a somewhat bad PDF facsimile of Vaticanus and it reads ἡμᾶς δεῖ ... πέμψαντός με. Opening Swanson με has the support of 01C, A, B, C, D pm Byz. The alternative ἡμᾶς is found in P66 P75 01T L W. This is an interesting case were the early papyri disagree with B.

As Timo mentioned, the error is definitely with the UBS folks. However, I noticed that while my 1998 1st printing UBS4 contains the error, my 2005 10th printing has fixed it. At some point in between, obviously, it must have been noticed.